


I am Scythian Torvil

by DenimPants



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenimPants/pseuds/DenimPants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carter Hall died, Kendra Saunders finally grasped all the things he wanted to tell her and it plagued her that she was never able to tell Carter that she remembered their lives together. When she discovers that his next re-incarnation has only just begun to navigate the memories of their lives together, Kendra takes it as her mission to lead him through his memories the way Carter tried to lead her through her memories. This proves to be a lot harder than she thought, considering Scythian Torvil had been trained from birth to reject any notions of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... I often feel like I'm the only person on the internet that actually ships Carter/Kendra. I think the concept of a romance lasting through lifetimes is quite compelling. In my head, they meet and fall in love for the first time, every time. It's like finding your first love in every new life. 
> 
> For Kendra, that experience was kind of ruined when Carter pushed her off of a building... but whatever. She has this chance now, to introduce Scythian Torvil to 2016. He's new to the present day, presumably trained to be a soldier, and has only just started to remember bits and pieces of his lives before.

## I am my Identity.

Scythian was at the ‘breakfast table’ trying to figure out how to work the coffee machine.

He wasn’t quite sure how a counter top got to be called a breakfast table, especially since it didn't seem Kendra actually ever ate breakfast.

“Having trouble?”

He jerked at the sound of her, his hand instinctively reaching for his side arm. He had been so fixated on working the contraption that he had no idea she was right behind him.

Twenty six years, he had grown up with nothing but war and training and vigilance. It was hard to come down from it. It was hard to come down from a lifetime of fighting…

Kendra stepped over to his side and gently reached out for the power cord. She plugged it into a socket into the wall and then a light on the machine turned red. “Barista to the rescue!”

She smiled.

He had no idea what she was talking about and stood foolishly waiting to see if she noticed he didn't understand her joke.

“Because it's a coffee machine?” she grinned.

He stared blankly.

“Don't worry about it,” she said, a little crestfallen.

Scythian was completely out of his element. Two days ago, he knew what he was. He knew who his enemies were and what was expected of him.

He was a soldier. Without him, the chaos would spread. He was order. He was in Savage’s elite. He was a weapon.

Two days ago, everything made sense.

Now he was wearing printed T-shirts and walking out in the sunlight without a rifle in a world where the people's worst problems were figuring out which idiot they wanted to vote for president. He was standing barely in arms reach of a woman which he was conditioned to despise and while every ounce of training in him wanted to see her dead, the very fiber in his being could not even fathom it.

The thought of Savage strangling Kendra on the Waverider blurred everything the thought he was sure of.

_It wouldn't be the first time Savage has strangled Shayera to death. At the time, the vision was so powerful that he acted without realizing it. In his mind eye, he had been incapacitated. Wings broken and an arm nailed to a hangpost. He couldn't help her then, and he desperately wanted to._

It was a moment. It was just enough to awaken something he had so long suppressed inside of him. It was the first moment in what would later become a steady stream of stronger incoherent moments.

He thanked Kendra, and tried to find a way to start a conversation with her. It wasn't like they were encouraged to socialize in the barracks. And what was he supposed to say anyway?

A gurgling nose started at his elbow, and half concerned it was a lazer charge he leaped back reaching for a butter knife.

Kendra’s hands were up in a moment and she said, “it's just the coffee machine boiling water,” she could see the alert soldier in his wide gray eyes. “It's okay.”

The coffee machine? He took a deep breath in, he was not cut out for this world; he didn't belong in this world. War was the only thing he knew, without that, what was he? In a slight moment of panic he forced his fingers to un-clench, and the knife dropped to the floor with a loud clatter.

He was shaking, ever ready to attack.

He was fighting his very nature not to.

“It's okay. It's okay,” she led him gently to the little post modern arm chair. He stumbled into it snatching for support. “You’re okay.”

She had rested her hands on his arms and he half shrugged her off, half drew her closer. He was still getting used to this thing about showing affection. He couldn't just dismiss five years of conditional training telling him this woman was a blight. But at the same time, he couldn't deny his own feelings as a slight wave of comfort washed over his panic like a balm. He let her wrap her arms around him and he relished and loathed how secure it made him feel.

He nestled into her strange, yet familiar scent and shuddered as he tried to even his breath. She was surrounding him.

Forehead to forehead, Scythian had this uncontrollable desire to kiss her rocket through his core. He might have too, if this moment didn't spur on a strong conditioned response:

**~~Love~~**.

“I'm sorry Kendra,” he gasped, withdrawing sharply, “I can't. It's too fast.”

She smiled sadly, her face filed with an understanding so painful that he wondered what he had done to deserve such patience. “It's okay. It always takes time, Car—” she stopped herself but the damage was done. “Scythian.”

He was not Carter. How could he be Carter? He had memories of being Scythian. True memories of his time in the barracks, training and war. He had memories and moments that defined him. He was a whole person before he was invaded by these visions of people that he was not. People that he could never be. “I'm not Carter.”

“I know that. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say ‘Carter’, it just sort of came out. It's just that you were Carter…”

“Well I'm not him. You can keep telling me that I was Carter Hall, but I can't believe it. I remember my mother's face!” Was that a valid argument?

“It'll come back to you slowly. Now you're awakened, your other memories will come back.”

“I already have a life. I remember being assigned my first bunk number. I remember the first tournament I won and my graduation. I remember my first raid, I remember the codes to the trench cache.—“

“Scythian. No one is telling you that your life isn't real.” She tried her best to sound level, “Everything you've experienced is not going away. And your current life will always be stronger than the memories of your previous ones.”

He was breathing much more heavily than he thought reasonable.

“Just like all memories,” she smiled cautiously, “the newer ones will always be brighter.”

He could at least, reconcile some of that logic with his woes. He was feeling weak. Still recovering from his injuries, but more so he was just emotionally drained.

He had trouble sleeping. Though Kendra invited him into her bed. He couldn’t be sure if he wanted to take it. He found himself on the living room futon. It at least reminded him off his rack. But he couldn't sleep.

_He had this vision of the two of them, sitting together on a beach. He was leaning in to give her a kiss._

He tried to sigh that vision away, crushing his palms into his eyes and hissed frustrated, “Tish.”

She swallowed, “You don't have to rush it. I can wait. A thousand years over countless lifetimes. I will wait for you for as long as you need. I will not abandon you.”

“What if it doesn't work. What if I never remember?”

“We’re soul mates. I would love you even we never met.”

Scythian felt his breath stop. For some reason, his own memory of the girl in the library window haunted him. He kept repeating the explosion in his head. It had been years since he last thought of that day.

“Have you and Carter ever lived a whole incarnation never meeting each other?”

She frowned, thought about it, “I can only think of two… three? Lives in which we never met in person, but we had somehow connected, however briefly, however remote.”

He could remember the young girl’s fists as she pounded on the glass. He could see her screaming on the top of her lungs: too remote to hear. So clear to see…

“How remote?” he asked, blinking.

“You'll remember these eventually,” she said.

“I want to know now.”

She was a little taken aback by his tone, but she obliged, realizing this was better than his outright denial of his existence as Kufu. “Uh. There was one where I found a diary, written by you an orphanage. The plague had hit us hard and it was among the toys of the victim children. I was drawn to the stories you wrote about how you were an angel with many lives and a true love. I kept it and read it every night. I realized it was you when I became a teenager, and that you we writing about me. I died as Milly Chareston in 1355, fell into an icy lake when looking for winter weeds.”

He didn't want to remember anything like that.

“You'd later tell me you activated when the plague first broke out. You said knowing I was out there and not being able to find me was the worst experience in your lives.” She smiled and said, “but I fell in love with you anyway.”

He waited but she hasn't meant to make her story so long. She wasn't sure how she share the other moments. Quickly, she resumed. “One we wrote letters from across the ocean. At the time, travel was long and dangerous. We risked it all to meet in Portugal. There were bad storms and my ship didn't make it. You lived out the rest of that life as a pirate.”

He waited, the stories were outlandish bit he believed every word. How could be not imagine himself in these situations, be he could imagine her. He could imagine that little girl, banging on the library window. “You said three?”

“Hmm” she looked up and said, “oh.” And hesitated as if thinking about it hurt, “There was one where we grew old and died without ever meeting. Neither of us knew the other existed and then we never had any reason to activate.” She thought about it with a distant look in her eye, “we we’re content at that life time… but in all the lives I can remember, that was the only one that I feel like I didn't really live. The one that followed featured disco, and trust me, we made up for lost time.”

Scythian didn't actually know what ‘disco’ was, and he stood the looking perplexed. “Is disco an institute?”

Kendra laughed and Scythian had this strange vision of her in large hoop earrings, an afro, and blinding psychedelic lights.

She jumped up from her seat and started to do a slight shake. In addition to the fact that it was unexpected, he found it highly inappropriate. “Disco is a kind of dance.”

Was that what this was?

“I can't dance,” he said immediately, defensive and hotly embarrassed. He was trying to escape as she snuck her body closer to him.

“Oh, but you can dance,” she smiled sliding up right in front of him till he was awkwardly careening away from her on his toes, “and you're good at it.”

“No. I really can't,” he said as she laced her fingers into his fingers and started to shake his arms for him. Her movements changed distinctly from her quick and bouncy strips, to a slow, hip driven rock. It was a rhythm he felt a little more comfortable with. And as she guided his arms around her, he felt himself sway with her motions. They were fluid, almost sensual, and he thought of his dreams, _making love to her._

This wasn’t very different from that. It was like a dance? He pressed his body into hers, found the small of her back with his left hand and clasped her left hand to his chest with his right hand. Through some unknown intuition that possessed him, he changed her steps, leading her with a slow and deliberate shadow of a waltz.

The playfulness in her posture changed slowly, when she looked at him, her gaze was filed with wonder. It did feel ungodly intuitive. It was so intimately practiced.

He spun her, not thinking, just naturally guiding her-- and as she turned in the daylight, _he thought of her in a ballroom wedding dress_. _Never looking so much more radiant than her on her wedding days._

He felt his stomach drop and a great need for her love hardened a knot in his heart. He ached for her, he wanted so badly to accept this now. To be accepted now.

**~~Love~~**.

He let go abruptly, trying desperately to remember that the conditioning was not his life anymore. It was okay to have these feelings. He did have these feelings.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered when she approached him worried. “I’m trying. I'm really trying. I get these pieces… they don't... they don't make sense.”

He had crossed his arms over his chest and was rubbing the hairs on the backs of his arms in a painfully vulnerable way. When she realized he was getting frustrated, she pushed in, holding his fidgeting hands still. Captivated by her, he halted. His eyes following her to the ends of the world.

“Just take your time. You're already recollecting a lot faster than normal. Once you fully remember, it will be easier.”

“How would you know?” he mumbled, how could anyone know?

“I've been there. As Kendra, this life: I know what it's like to be told you have something special and know it's there, but can't see it just yet.” She smiled reassuringly. “Carter waited so long for me to remember and I just couldn't. But I could feel it. No matter how much I tried to reason with it, I just could feel it was true. My heart knew it even when my brain didn't. And I'm willing to wait a lifetime for you to remember, because I know that you feel it too.”

Was that true? It did explain some of what he was experiencing…. It articulated a lot of what he was feeling.

So, against his training-- against his conditioning--when he felt a pang of desire, for the first time in his life, he followed it.

Kendra was a space away from him, but closing that gap seemed to take an eternity. She reacted immediately, tilting her chin and parting her lips, letting him control the speed.

**~~Love~~**.

He felt so hollow, as if this was betraying everything he knew. He wanted it, he could feel it in her skin. His heart pounding in his ears and his chest clenched like a vice.

**~~Love~~ **

He felt like he was falling apart, shaking so hard that he wasn't sure if he could stay standing. The heat from Kendra’s breath lit his quivering lip. Every bit of training strained against him. But he wanted it.

**~~Love~~** …

He had to stop. The demons in his head were so loud. He couldn't stop. His upper lip barely brushed her lower lip and his legs nearly gave out from under him. It was so powerful, barely a flicker. She pulled her breath in, stole his and he pushed forward again: tearing away from every bit of training, every conditioning, every loveless notion and just plummeted into her welcoming embrace.

Loved.

Their kiss, tender and urgent at the same time. More amazing than any dream he might have had. More powerful than any other experience. Having finally broken that spell, he poured out his entire soul looking for something to hold on to. He had never kissed a woman before…

_Memory upon memory of his past lives and Shayera's kisses. In the blink of an eye._

But **Scythian** had never kissed a woman before. He drained himself in her. In the next thousand more lifetimes, he hoped this kiss was going to be one that he remembers. His body was betraying him; his legs shaking, his weight dragging him down. He couldn’t control that knot in his belly, and his balance faltered till he needed support. The kiss; It brought him to his knees…

It brought him to his knees.

Completely exhausted, he felt her lift away, taking part of his broken soul with her. He dared not open his eyes, kneeling in the floor of the small apartment. His lips still parted in want, his skin still electrified and on fire.

When he finally did dare to open his eyes, she was gazing down on him with the worry of a lover. And it was like he was seeing her for the first time. Hallowed in light… radiant and good.

She reached for his face and brushed her thumbs over his eyes, clearing them completely from tears. She dried the trails as they rolled down his cheeks.

_He thought of the girl at the library._


	2. I am my History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I actually wrote this part first. But decided to post the second part before this because the second sounds more like Prose. It is a short brush through what I envisioned was Scythian's history from his birth all the way to the moment he fought Kendra in 2166. I did it partially to romanticize about how mind-washed Scythian was by the time he first meets Kendra, deepening this darkness that he's being brought out of. And also to satisfy an itch I had about whether or not the Shayera incarnate of Scythian's time would be cheated of her true love; since, you know, Kendra had both Carter and Scythian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To satisfy my questions:  
> 1) If Carter is Kendra's soul mate; and Scythian was displaced in time as a re-incarnate of Carter, does that mean Kendra's re-incarnate of Scythian's time is left without a soul mate?

 

As far back as he could remember, Scythian Torvil had this reoccurring dream. He was flying or falling through the air usually over a desert wasteland (though sometimes the scenery around him would change). He was not flying on a raid ship, not flying with the propulsion pack. He was just flying on his own, pulled up by sheer will.

They didn't happen frequently, but they happened often enough for him to take note of it.

That started around about the time he had been assigned to foot training with the other selected boys. Long after he had forgotten who his parents could have been. Long after familial rejection consulting had taken hold, and brotherhood conditioning was well on the way. He never told the wardens, he never really knew why not though.

Combat training was intensive, he excelled, though only as much as they allowed him to. To be unique was a privilege only Savage could bestow. No one knew how he picked favorites.

Strategy and loyalty conditioning was easy. He thrived in that too.

Submission gave him trouble, and a few more trips to the disciplinary cells than he would have liked.

He was 8 when he had his first bad-boy dream. She had gold in her hair. He woke up wet in his bed. He was in the disciplinary cell the next night, and enrolled in Subjugation Techniques the next week: youngest in the course.

At the time, because of his age, he didn't have to participate in the group rape exercises, he was required to watch, but he found the wardens couldn't tell when he stared intently at the edge of the training-zone lines.

He was 13 when he went on his first raid. The squadron was charged to level a town just outside of Cambridge, the population just under 2500. The nights leading up to it, he had dreams of a little girl leading him by the hand through rice fields: they were knee deep in water, she was a little angel with wings and luscious curls.

By then he had done his best to follow training, putting aside fantasies and forgetting most dreams; but he had difficulty forgetting that one. Distinctly because he thought he saw her that next day—

He had been hit by a stray rebel bullet and had to remove his helmet to fix his microphone. It was already overwhelming: being trained at the barracks was different from being in the field. The purpose was to get used to real combat. A chance wind turned him toward an old abandoned library with tall, reaching windows.

On the fourth floor stood a girl, just about his age, pressed against the glass smashing the window at him as hard as she could. Not in panic, not in desperation, not in fear. She was calling out for him. He couldn't hear her but he knew she was trying to reach him.

She wanted him to notice her.

He has dreamed her into existence. For a second, he was lost in himself and this new experience of a raid. And he wanted to go to her, find out what it was that made her so distinct in his mind. Feelings of desire had been conditioned out of them, so this particular emotion was both distracting and dangerous.

He didn't even hear the pass-over.

The building was hit by a molotov proto rocket. It went up in an angry ball of fire. In less than a minute, the entire building was razed to the ground; it was still burning when Scythian finally gathered his wits. The shock of the blast had taken his breath away; he has jerked so hard from surprise that he thought his heart would never pump right again.

And a little bit of him died inside.

The raid was over in five hours. The whole population was annihilated. Scythian was assigned to sweep that sector for survivors, and terminate, and he rummaged through the library. It had been a hideaway with a dozen other burned bodies in a clump by the back wall. One, just a little off from the rest, leaning against the melted char of glass.

He held his breath when he uncovered her: the body charred beyond recognition. All that was left of the body were the black bones and a cloak made of feathers… Scythian didn't quite know how, but a steady tear ran down his face.

This was why they weren't allowed to dream.

The bodies were ground an incinerated in the usual manner. The boy had found a corner of the decimated town and cried uncontrollably into his knees as the white ash floated through the air.

Fortunately, he was not the only one who was caught breaking down on their first raid. Generally, it was common and expected. He and six others from his batch were taken to camp and there they took Remedial Subjugation Tactics.

This time, on the lessons about brutality and rape, Scythian forced himself to watch it all. The remedial course doesn't have a group rape exercise. One supposed that the conditioners assumed they had already participated in one.

It was a strange day the first time he saw Vandal Savage. Already conditioned to fear and obey him, the last thing Scythian wanted was to bring shame on his squadron. He was 15. Good at what he did, loyal, and thoroughly trained. He never did tell his wardens that he still dreamed.

Savage needed only to take one look at the crowd of a thousand other teenaged soldiers to even see him. A singular second. You were told to watch Savage with the intensity of loyalty. Scythian wanted to, but was having trouble.

It made him uncomfortable. It made him nervous. He just assumed that a man of power would do that to anyone.

So when Vandal stepped off of his podium and cut through the lines of perfectly arranged soldiers to stand in front of Scythian, the youth wanted nothing more than to flee.

“What is your name, boy?”

“Scythian Torvil. Lord,” he could only respond.

“Who am I?”

He had hoped Savage didn't notice the look of confusion on his eyes when they darted involuntarily at his commander, and then back to the sky. “You are the supreme Lord Commander Vandal Savage.”

“And?”

Scythian didn't know there was more. He tried to scour his mind for the appropriate response. He came up blank. And… he was distinctly sure he was going to die.

“I… don't understand the question?” he had to admit.

The smile that Savage gave was brutal and completely pure. A glee radiated off of him and he took Scythian by the arm. “Perfect.”

Scythian became a pet project from that moment on. Unsure how our why, he was removed from his dorm, placed in with the elites. He received training in the same courses as Savage’s own daughter and attended rigorous private conditioning sessions. Some of them reminded the soldier of his childhood conditioning; the flashes of light, subliminal messages, constant influx of mind numbing images.

But, as being chosen by Savage was an honor not to take lightly, Scythian felt like it was his duty to embrace his blessings.

Less than a year later, they began the physical resistance training…

Torture and pain were simple tools in Scythian’s world; and he was made stronger by them. Stripped down by them. Slowly he let parts of that made him feel different, ebb away. Systematically, Savage carved out that which Scythian held in his core till there was nothing but a brutal, well trained warrior.

He was not simply loyal; he was fully committed to Savage. Unwavering and unquestioning. Cruel and brutal in his every waking moment. Rewarded for his savagery. Praised for his devotion.

There was nothing left of the boy who wept at Cambridge.

Except when he dreamed. There was a far off place in the arms and warmth and comfort of a woman.

Scythian’s loyalty was tested when he was 21. And when it was undeniable that he would die for Vandal Savage, his Lord and Commander began a secret briefing. Scythian was one of twenty who received explicit knowledge of those who Savage would call the Enemy. Full history and scope of the eight individuals who Savage identified as the singularly dominant threat to the world that they knew.

More than that, Savage made sure that Scythian was to hate them with the deepest understanding that they were not deserving of mercy, or kindness.

Savage made pains to impressed upon Scythian the threat Kendra Saunders was to him in particular. Her villainous nature and her ability to warp men's minds.

He would be the most susceptible.

From photos and through the profile, he would admit he could see the allure.

From that moment on, Scythian committed their faces to memory. But none were so clear as Kendra’s…

She had replaced the woman in his dreams. Or maybe she became her. At night, he rolled about, conquering her till she had no breath, pounding her deeply at his pleasure. Some nights he'd wake up hard at the thought of her, this unspeakable enemy; the vixen for him to subdue.

Was it considered subjugation if she was clinging on to him?

And then there she was, in 2166, over Savage with her ore just as his Lord said she would be. He was only too happy to finally fulfill his dreams, and take her life.

Or take her…

He had, at the time, underestimated her abilities.

**Author's Note:**

> (For continuity sake, Vandal actually dies in 2021... but Scythian's history remains in tact through the multiverse (because if vandal did die before then, how could he have trained Scythian in adulthood...? or why would Rip's family still be dead? Or how could they fight and kill vandal in 3 separate times and he's still alive to fight/die?) but they also do not have to worry about Savage in the future.   
> I'm fairly fascinated by Kendra and Carter's dynamic (was irritated when they killed him the first time, and completely enraged when she tried to act 'in love' with Palmer, who was so much better off without her.....)  
> I know there are a lot of haters of the pair, and it did seem that Carter was kind of a d'bag, and Kendra's a bit of an idiot... lol. But it makes the most compelling romantic story for me. They're destined to be in love over several incarnations and Kendra just wasn't ready to accept it.   
> I had many questions for Kendra/Carter at the end of season one:   
> With Scythian (Carter's next incarnation) was just starting to remember his past lives, did that mean he also wasn't ready to be in love with Kendra?   
> With his entire last life time spent training on being Savage's lapdog, would he have trouble adjusting in 2016?  
> If Carter and Kendra were meant for each other in this life time, did moving Scythian back 150 years in time mean he left behind a future Shiera/Kendra who would never know true love?  
> What would Scythian do once he realized how much Vandal actually used him?  
> Are all of Kendra's and Carter's past lives, just 'pick up where we left off'? I think not.   
> I personally, was also fascinated with this idea that two people can fall in love several incarnations over-- is it like 'first love' every time? 
> 
> I'm incredibly disappointed that the show runners 'had trouble writing stories for them'... like, WHAT? This is just a complete lack of imagination on the show writer's parts. Especially considering THEY'RE IN A TIME MACHINE THEY CAN MEET A BRAND NEW SHIERA/KUFU ANYWHERE IN TIME! Though... let's be honest, LOT is not a very well thought out show...
> 
> ... actually, I have a lot of trouble with the logic on the show. and here's not the best time for me to rant...


End file.
